A Look at Mines and Technologies That Help Them Deal With Disasters

An illustration of the survivors of Europe's worst mining disaster which killed 1,099 miners 100 years ago on March 10, 1906 in Courrieres, northern France. Only 13 miners survived after being trapped underground for 20 days. (Reuters)

A Ukrainian miner walks through a cloud of steam after an accident occured in the water system at the Gorky mine in Donetsk, east of Kiev, Feb. 11, 1997. (Reuters)

FILE - An April, 1981 photo shows U.S. Bureau of Mines' John Stockalis (R) and Dan Lewis dropping a thermometer through a hole on Main Street in Centralia, Pa., to measure heat from a shaft mine blaze that had been burning under the town since 1962. (AP)

A vent used by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to monitor an underground coal mine fire near Centralia, Pennsylvania, Dec. 18, 2007. (Reuters)

Aerial view of a mudslide which trapped 12 men inside a collapsed magnesium silicate mine in Lassing, south-west of Vienna,  Austria, July 18, 1998. Eleven men, one of them a geologist, became trapped when they went down the mine to try to rescue a colleague trapped by an earlier mudslide. (Reuters)

 

Georg Hainzl is brought to a hospital inside a pressure chamber, July 26, 1998. Hainzl, who had been trapped in a collapsed mine in the village of Lassing, Austria, for 10 days, was pulled out from 60 meters underground in remarkably good health. (Reuters)

Miners transport cables to ensure electric power supply at the entrance of the Jiaojiazhai coal mine in Xinzhou, north China's Shanxi province, where 19 miners died in a gas blast, Nov. 8, 2006. (Reuters)

A miner, who is part of a rescue team, clutches his breathing apparatus as he prepares to enter the Sago Mine in Tallmansville, West Virginia, Jan. 3, 2006. Treacherous conditions, including the presence of poisonous gas, slowed efforts to rescue 13 trapped coal miners. (Reuters)

Robert Murray, founder and chairman of Cleveland-based Murray Energy Corp., points to rubble blocking a tunnel in the Crandall Canyon Mine, northwest of Huntington, Utah, where six coal miners were trapped, Aug. 8, 2007. (Reuters)

A high resolution dual lens camera system sits on the back bumper of a truck waiting to be lowered into an 1,868-foot shaft as part of the rescue effort at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Huntington, Utah for six trapped miners, Aug. 11, 2007. (Reuters)

An undated photo provided by Lockheed Martin shows Lockheed engineer Dave LeVan standing next to a MagneLink underground mining communication system. LeVan developed the technology that uses magnetic waves to send signals to the surface in the event of a mining disaster. (AP)

A special drill, theXtrata 950, which will dig an escape hole for 33 miners trapped underground in a copper and gold mine at Copiapo, north of Santiago, Chile, is seen inside the mine, Aug. 25, 2010. (Reuters)

Workers load a tube used for sending supplies to 33 miners trapped in a deep underground copper and gold mine at Copiapo, north of Santiago, Chile, Sep. 9, 2010. The miners have been stuck in a tunnel 2,300 feet (700 metres) below ground for weeks after a cave-in. (Reuters)

A New Zealand soldier secures a robot from Australia onto a truck at Hokitika airport on New Zealand's west coast, Nov. 24, 2010. The robot will be used to assist the rescue effort of 29 miners trapped underground after an explosion at the nearby Pike River coal mine. (Reuters)

Headlights are charged inside a changing room of a coal mine after a mining disaster in Soma, a district in Turkey's western province of Manisa, May 14, 2014. Rescuers were still trying to reach parts of the coal mine almost 48 hours after fire knocked out power and shut down ventilation shafts and elevators, trapping hundreds underground. (Reuters)